MrsBrown's philosophy of life and stuff

I spent most of yesterday on the couch, staring at my computer.  I'm hoping that will trick my body into thinking that I don't need to do that again today.  I was paid to do it yesterday, I won't be paid today (except for that 3 hours I have to make up for this week).

Anyway, as I sit here in my nice warm bed, drinking tea provided by my husband, I'm contemplating all the things I would like to have completed by the end of the weekend;

Cook those two loaves of bread I prepared last night (hang on......ok back now)
make lemon and ginger cordial to take to work as a herbal tea like thing so I can kick my caffeine habit before we go to the US. (I'm not hopeful of getting regular tea, certainly not the 6 or so cups I'm currently drinking)
clean the kitchen - I'll do this in several bursts or persuade someone else to do several bursts, omg so filthy!  We have made pasta, lasagne, bread, frittata, stir fry and various lunches and breakfasts since the dishes were last done.  It ought to be filthy.
make the pasta dough into pasta and dry it - I'll do this once the kitchen is clean enough to have pasta draped over it for a while.
Muck around in the garden.  I have seedlings to plant and a green manure crop to start.  I have to clear/clean some space first.  I may also move my rhubarb plant out of prime sun position to somewhere a bit more shady.  It doesn't need all that sun, and other stuff does.  I might put half of it in the front garden too.
I should make something with spinach too - the perpetual spinach is about to take over it's bed.
Take another look at my half-baked pizza oven plan; clear the space, identify the stuff in our backyard we can use and gather some bricks. It's looking like I can't find a decent space.   If I put it in my preferred location I may well cook the lovely grape vine - not OK
make a pizza oven
go to the market, or get someone else to
do a thorough tidy of the loungeroom and find my wallet
watch River Cottage DVD's and knit my jumper I think this is next
sew some more of the cover for the couch

That's all.  What shall I do tomorrow?

A while ago splodgenoodles gave me a present.  and today I planted all the winter suitable salad leaf seeds that were left. 

I've had this empty patch burning a hole in my gardening subconscious, so today I marked up some rows and sprinkled one of each variety in each row.  That's about 8 different types of leaves.  They were useby Dec 2010 so it seemed the only sensible thing to do with them.   "When" they all come up I'll thin them and eat the thinnings.  And hopefully, I'll  get sick of the sight of green leaves and give some away.

For the record, I also planted some broccoli seedlings and peas and I need to find a spot for the seakale and perpetual spinach.

what shall I do today?  I'm not going to work paid work.

Possibilities;

buy that new dishwasher
send emails about William Marshal done!
garden stuff - remove plants in the place I want to put bare rooted fruit trees, buy seedlings, move the compost bin
visit sjkasabi
visit my mum
work on my fabric catalogue

get moving to stay warm

I got home early from work today.  Early enough to have a nap and I'm thinking it might be worth getting to work early so I can do it more often.

After my nap we had dinner and then I had enough energy to go and address my garden.  Rose and I headed out and watered, weeded and pruned my veg garden.  OMG, maybe 4 squash plants was a mistake.  Although they're looking interesting growing over the old ladder I set up for them. Sometime soon I'm \going to have to nag mr-bassman to clean up his crap off the lawn so it can be mown - its nearly knee high after the rain.

Once I'd done all I could be bothered with in the backyard, Rose I headed out front where I finally pulled up almost all of the grass between my iris'.  It was even better after I realised that Rose could be praised into thinking that putting the weeds in the bin was a fabulous thing to do.  I even scored praise from a passerby.  He said, "you're doing a good job", but I couldn't work out if he was talking about my weeding or my parenting.  Finished off the weeding with a planting reward - a ground cover thing with pink flowers that Rose chose about 4 weeks ago and I've been paranoid was going to die from a lack of water ever since.  Next planting exercise is the seedlings.   I've been waiting for them to stop being straggly for what seems like weeks now, when are they going to bush up and look like plants instead of seedlings?  Maybe they need more sun than they're getting under the grapevine where I put them so they don't get burnt to a crisp.

Further domestic bliss was experienced when I put on a tape of nursery rhymes (by Maddie Prior and Tim whatsisname) and did the dishes and sang with Rose.  I capped off my Happy Family experience by washing her (a once in a fortnight or so event), brushing her teeth (happens most days at least once, more often since she started kinder), found her pajamas (once every couple of days), read stories (most nights except when she falls asleep at 6pm) and then she happily turned over and went to sleep without asking for water, another toilet visit or to have some food.

Good news on her calcium intake though - the grated cheese is a winner.  Rose doesn't drink milk, was refusing cheese sandwiches or other lumps of cheese and was playing with her morning yoghurt instead of eating it.  On my list of things to do is to find other foods beside dairy that can give her the 4 or so servings she's supposed to be having.

Splodgenoodle and I should have caught up about 3 weeks ago.  Last time I saw her she offered me some seeds - salad greens for my new garden enthusiasm. But with one thing and another we just haven't gotten together; not for chatting and not for seed exchange.

This is what arrived in the mail today.


And this is what we did after dinner tonight.



For my own reference later;

I planted the carrots and radish behind the cabbage/broccoli/brussel sprouts.
The Thelma Sanders Squash is on the right of the rest of the garden, in the wasteland in front of the Hibiscus tree
The sunflower seeds are in the wasteland on the right
and I've planted the salad greens in front of the brick wall. They include Mild mix mustard, Golden Purslane, Tokyo Bekana and Mustard Spinach.

I still need to work out where I can plant the perpetual spinach and seakale. I'm thinking about the front garden for those.

Now to hope they don't all end up looking like this;

My plan is to spend tomorrow in my front garden.  It's needed weeding for the last 2 months, but everytime I've looked at it I've said, "after Midwinter".

It's after Midwinter, so tomorrow I'm gardening.

I was going to prune my Almond tree.  I've intended to do that for the past 3 years, but every year I realise I'm too late.  I thought this year was going to be my year.  I was wrong.

When I looked at it this morning I realised that even though it only lost the last of its leaves 2 weeks ago, it already has flower buds.  That's right, I blinked and missed the opportunity.

That's possibly ok though because now I've done my research, I"ve found out that late spring/early summer might be a better time - less chance of disease problems apparently.

Anyway, so I know where to look next time, here are the best links I found on the subject:

http://www.treeworld.info/attachments/f2/1626d1183263802-another-almond-tree-http.pdf_almonds-garden-h3136.pdfhttp://www.treeworld.info/attachments/f2/1627d1183263826-another-almond-tree-fs2006_fruitpruning_msivyer.pdf